Stephen Hayes, best known as the Chubby Chatterbox, is a renowned Northwest humorist specializing in observations about growing up in the Fifties, Sixties and beyond. The Chubby Chatterbox is an unabashedly sentimental journey seen through the eyes of an artist, traveler and world-class screw-up.

I seem to be spending less time writing these days with most of my creative energy going to painting and drawing.
Before closing my studio space in our cold garage and moving indoors to pursue charcoal drawing, I painted a portrait of our local mayor, just for fun, and an oil sketch of a young man I found on the Internet.
This portrait is of Mayor Denny Doyle. I was prompted to paint him after studying John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Henry James, in particular the challenge of portraying a hair-challenged person against a dark background. The head needs to recede into the background at the top to prevent a cutout effect. I presented this painting to the mayor at a city council meetin ...